Guild Wars 2

So, how would you guys feel if WvW changed to not allow characters to ‘phase’ through each other as if we didn’t exist? Say you run INTO a guardian instead of through him, both friend and foe? Give characters a hit box with some mass.

I feel this could go a long way in reducing blobbing, giant unorganized zerging, massive boon stacking etc… Think about organized front lines with ranged back lines. Think about being able to defend opened gates as REAL choke holds. This could also possibly change some characteristics of aoe stacking and give push backs and launches some interesting new play.

Thoughts? Discuss?

yep thought about it interesting and i would be in favor but I can’t imagine it happening because performance issues would be worse and griefing could quickly get out of hand.

But coding-wise it would just be like a tiny ring of warding around every player without the knockback effect and stability cannot negate.

But what about ranged attacks? Would they still be blocked by your own players? can dodges, moving skills, stealth, etc get you past blobs?

To my knowledge, every game that has tried friendly collision detection has been a failure in part due to trolls.

Straegen.2938:

To my knowledge, every game that has tried friendly collision detection has been a failure in part due to trolls.

you can only have friendly collision boxes IF and only IF the game is LAN mode only. No online multiplayer, just local lan. And even then, you get trolled.

Solstice.1097:

yep thought about it interesting and i would be in favor but I can’t imagine it happening because performance issues would be worse and griefing could quickly get out of hand.

But coding-wise it would just be like a tiny ring of warding around every player without the knockback effect and stability cannot negate.

But what about ranged attacks? Would they still be blocked by your own players? can dodges, moving skills, stealth, etc get you past blobs?

Interesting and excellent questions! I would say projectiles would have to pass through allies, as they cant really be arced over, this would have to be the case with all attacks. I think the ability to dodge through characters could be interesting. Pets and summons would have to ignore characters for movement of course, or that would be a mess. Stealth I’m on the fence about. Movement skills could have a bit of a push to them for enemies only, reduced movement speed that would be further reduced if being pushed against with running. Mist for would go through of course. Anything else?

what if dodge-rolling skipped this altogether so trolling wasn’t really an issue and you couldn’t really accomplish anything by standing in someone’s way?

as well as stealth and leap finishers.

Solstice.1097:

what if dodge-rolling skipped this altogether so trolling wasn’t really an issue and you couldn’t really accomplish anything by standing in someone’s way?

as well as stealth and leap finishers.

I think that could work.

And as for performance its as simple as collision detection on hit box, can’t be that bad.

You just think ANET’s servers are bogged down now….

performance issues and griefing concerns make this 100% unfeasible.

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible. That game died for many other reasons, but collision detection did work.

At this point it would be too big of a change for them to add to GW2, but newer games should consider it.

King Amadaeus.8619:

You just think ANET’s servers are bogged down now….

^this^ The extra burden on an outdated and already overburdened game engine would be huge.

Cactus.2710:

King Amadaeus.8619:

You just think ANET’s servers are bogged down now….

^this^ The extra burden on an outdated and already overburdened game engine would be huge.

Whoa… this is still the best production MMO engine out right now. This is also one of the few complex combat massive scale MMOs around. Sure there are problems but I have not seen anything coming down the pike that is noticeably better (and that includes Wildstar and ESO).

I keep telling people…

- Collision detection

- Friendly fire coupled with punishment, ie killing the player that killed a friendly player

= hilarity on a whole new level.

Look at the bright side – no more zergs. If 50+ people decide to PvD, they are all dead in seconds while the defenders wonder wtf happened.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible. That game died for many other reasons, but collision detection did work.

At this point it would be too big of a change for them to add to GW2, but newer games should consider it.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer

LOL.

No it didn’t. It caused unbelievable lagstorms as 100+ players tried to cram up a ramp with a bunch of tanks blocking backed up with mages. Not to mention sync and interpolation issues or block-banding.

Sure when pvp was reduced to 20 man groups because the game became unpopular it worked, kinda.

Straegen.2938:

Cactus.2710:

King Amadaeus.8619:

You just think ANET’s servers are bogged down now….

^this^ The extra burden on an outdated and already overburdened game engine would be huge.

Whoa… this is still the best production MMO engine out right now. This is also one of the few complex combat massive scale MMOs around. Sure there are problems but I have not seen anything coming down the pike that is noticeably better (and that includes Wildstar and ESO).

The game engine used in GW2 is an updated version of that used in GW1 from several years ago, using middleware developed by Havok back in 2007. How much either of them have been updated since then is uncertain, but the very fact that GW2 has such a meager map limitation indicates that the updates were more geared toward graphics enhancements than overall capability (which was the subject of this thread). Besides, how long have game engines been able to utilize more than one CPU core?

I suspect that much of capability problem associated with GW2 lies with some really poor decisions they made to needlessly go so overboard on visual effects that the game couldn’t handle, but the bottom line is that the combination of the game engine and how ANet uses it results in it being overwhelmed and not capable of handling a bunch of extra computational overhead.

In any case, there are several other more modern MMO game engines that have been used in recent releases, among them being Forgelight, VisionEngine8, BigWorld, and HeroEngine. I don’t have a clue how any of those stack up against GW2’s engine overall, but I’d bet that saying “GW2 uses the best production MMO engine” currently in use is inaccurate. If you are more knowledgeable on that than the rest of us, please state some specifics to back up your claim.

Straegen.2938:

To my knowledge, every game that has tried friendly collision detection has been a failure in part due to trolls.

I’ve seen it done successfully in other games. To avoid trolls there is a toggle button added to the GUI to crawl through the mass, it also increases damage and critical hit chance against the crawler so that it is a death sentence in PvP.

If you choose the melee assist option I think it adds a form of collision detection. I can’t remember how good it is though, I turned it off immediately after logging in on my first character.

Dawdler.8521:

I keep telling people…

- Collision detection

- Friendly fire coupled with punishment, ie killing the player that killed a friendly player

= hilarity on a whole new level.

I’m with you on that one. I can’t wait for a studio to final bite the bullet and run with a fantasy MMORPG with Friendly Fire. Pathfinder Online is doing it Q3 2014 I believe. It’s going to be a bloodbath.

Can you imagine collision detection + friendly fire + no limit AOE? Real world mechanics that if you shot an AC over an area, ALL players in the circle would be hit. Or a zerker Ele with Meteor Shower on big blobs. The trolling would be epic.

… I support this idea.

Melee assist does already move you out of target, so the game is capable. As I’m sure no one here has developed this games engine themselves, assuming no performance issues, let’s keep the topic on the concept.

As far as gameplay, collision detection works fine with the right rulesets. Darkfall and Eve Online both have collision detection, and trolling related to it is not a big issue because you can kill the troll. They have other rules also which contribute to making it work that I won’t go into here.

Technically it’s a challenging problem, but doable. Historically game studios have had horrible server architectures and not a lot of talent that knew how to design systems that could handle things server side collision detection on a large scale. That’s slowly changing, so I expect to see better in future games.

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

If you judge it by what some games in the past have done, then yes that is how it would appear. There are frameworks out there now that can handle full 3d server side collision detection at massive scale, and are being used in production. I would expect to see more full collision detection being used in games coming out over the next couple of years. Given how long game development cycles are, it takes time for new tech to make it’s way in.

Could you imagine the defensive plays like holding a bridge or archway? Having theives sneak through the lines to assassinate casters? Would your back line focus fire on their front line? Or would they step a little closer to hit their rear support?

Would this encourage smaller zergs, and reward more organized play? Would it change the roles classes or make them more/less viable?

I think it would really make WvW a lot more strategic. I don’t think there should be friendly clipping (troll concerns), but there should definitely be enemy clipping. I think it would diversify the types of builds you saw in WvW. I would love to see this happen.

Op says this would go a long way to reduce zerging/blobbing, I think it would do the exact opposite, now the blobs can form a meat wall and the smaller groups that would normally break through their lines are fubar. The only time this would work against a zerg is in choke points and even then they would just keep widdling down your front line until no one was left because they have superior numbers.

meat wall ? now, that’s when the balistas come to action….

it would dramatically improve the game. the strategies could evolve beyond “let’s form a giant wad of flesh and blow ourselves up before tapdancing around in that other wad of blown up flesh” choke points could be held a lot easier. positioning would become much more important. smaller numbers could take on larger numbers if they put themselves in the right places to do so. it would be far more about actual strategies and tactics than manipulating gimmicks and flaws in the design.

however, it would take work and money for them to do, and would benefit WvW, so we can be sure that this will never happen.

Terrible idea is terrible. It would effectively turn every player in a fight into its own miniature line of warding. In WvW this alone would be game breaking as it defeats the purpose of everything from the abilities that do cause collisions to the abilities that counter them.

Stick guardian/warrior super tanks to stand in a choke point (Like after a gate goes down) and the only enemy that will get inside is thieves and maybe a mesmer.

Guardians wouldn’t need rings and lines.

Movement is the single most important and least latency dependent aspect of combat and here we have a suggestion to greatly restrict it and make it the most latency dependent part of the game.

Full cleric’s M/S guards for everyone! We can start fighting over hills at reset and finish when the next reset kicks us all out! =D

Only, if there is momentum. A huge blob of players rushing forward could simply blow away some meager 10 players due to the bigger mass involved.
If you want to make things realistic, then go all the way.

I’ve kicked around an idea like this, and all I can say is “maybe”. Now, when I speak further, the idea I am speaking further on is this: All players, friendly and enemy, as well as NPCs, have a melee assist-like option forced on so you cannot walk through them in WvW.

All things considered, I think that would improve strategy of WvW.

The blobbing aspect of gameplay is annoying enough, and one of the things that seems to be “OP” about the whole thing is that a zerg of 50 people can, on command, gather together into a single spot to maximize the effectiveness of buffs and minimize the effectiveness of enemy AoE.

But what if that was really hard to do? If players ran into each other, then moving as a gigantic blob of players would be hard, and would require a high amount of coordination to pull off. Stacking together would be hard, because players would lump up on each other and would have to walk around each other. Running out of the stack would be hard, since if the guy in front of you isn’t moving, then you aren’t moving.

I figure that there would be three group sizes, and they would have their mobility aspect magnified by their size, and their coordination:

Small group(1-15): highly mobile, no coordination, low supply and low siege force
Medium group (16-35): average mobility, requires moderate coordination, moderate supply and average siege force
Large group (36+): low mobility, requires large coordination, high amount of supply and siege force.

I think the only detriment is that melee trains will be harder, in two ways. First, the meleers can’t blob as well, so they’ll have to spread out. This will limit the speed at which they kill. Second, enemy players can stand in the way of the melee train, making it so players will instead clash against a barrier of player bodies instead of pushing right through a zerg.

It will be harder, but I imagine it will still be an effective strategy, since to actually prevent enemy meleers from charging forward and killing everyone, you need to have your own group of meleers to stand in front of the ranged damage. Otherwise, the ranged fighters will back up on themselves, get trapped by their own back-line, and then get mowed over when they are simultaneously cleaved by two or 3 meleers in a phalanx.

Dawdler.8521:

I keep telling people…

- Collision detection

- Friendly fire coupled with punishment, ie killing the player that killed a friendly player

= hilarity on a whole new level.

Look at the bright side – no more zergs. If 50+ people decide to PvD, they are all dead in seconds while the defenders wonder wtf happened.

I agree. Though friendly fire should get damage reduction to 50%, because it’s too easy to hits allies with all the aoe + auto-attacks in this game. Also, ranged projectiles should only be blocked by enemy players standing in front of others. Else ranged professions become a dying breed, or they could add in a AIM option, where you shoot through a gap in allied bodies.

It could even result in really interesting combo effects: You throw a fire bolt at your ally, he uses shield block and the bolt burst into a explosion of fire away from the ally. Or he could load his shield with the fire and unload it. Also, you should be able to do combos in enemy fields.

Woh, the amount of dynamic combat this would offer

This thread is basicly a “what if…”. The performance, already one of WvW’s weak points, would take a dive for the worst.

How about “hardcore” servers with 60% health, no rallies, your mass idea, and wait for it…..

Friendly Fire on!

lulz

Sirendor.1394:

It could even result in really interesting combo effects: You throw a fire bolt at your ally, he uses shield block and the bolt burst into a explosion of fire away from the ally. Or he could load his shield with the fire and unload it. Also, you should be able to do combos in enemy fields.

You miss the obvious scenario where you ally forget to block, burst into flame, runs around screaming and flailing his arms, setting every other ally around him on fire, they run around flailing their arms too and start setting the entire keep on fire, then all the allies that remain are trapped inside the burning keep because there is a pile of burning corpses by the door.

Dawdler.8521:

Sirendor.1394:

It could even result in really interesting combo effects: You throw a fire bolt at your ally, he uses shield block and the bolt burst into a explosion of fire away from the ally. Or he could load his shield with the fire and unload it. Also, you should be able to do combos in enemy fields.

You miss the obvious scenario where you ally forget to block, burst into flame, runs around screaming and flailing his arms, setting every other ally around him on fire, they run around flailing their arms too and start setting the entire keep on fire, then all the allies that remain are trapped inside the burning keep because there is a pile of burning corpses by the door.

That would be hilarious. :P

Cactus.2710:

In any case, there are several other more modern MMO game engines that have been used in recent releases, among them being Forgelight, VisionEngine8, BigWorld, and HeroEngine. I don’t have a clue how any of those stack up against GW2’s engine overall, but I’d bet that saying “GW2 uses the best production MMO engine” currently in use is inaccurate. If you are more knowledgeable on that than the rest of us, please state some specifics to back up your claim.

The only production game Forgelight has that is comparable IMO is Planetside 2 which is an FPS MMO with very simple combat mechanics. VisionEngine8… that is Havok and I am unaware of any AAA MMO titles using it. Same with BigWorld. HeroEngine is SWToR and not only does that game look worse its large scale combat had to be removed from the game.

Simply put GW2 has no modern WvW equal in production release that I am aware of.
If someone can show me a relatively modern MMO engine that works on this scale with complex combat, I would love to try it. I keep playing GW2 because the landscape for this style of gameplay is currently barren. Upcoming titles I have some exposure to are not looking very good either.

snacktime.1082:

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

No, you can’t. It’s not about server side performance but about the time it takes for a change of movement (direction or speed) by one client to be communicated to another – which would be in the order of .5 seconds.

frans.8092:

snacktime.1082:

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

No, you can’t. It’s not about server side performance but about the time it takes for a change of movement (direction or speed) by one client to be communicated to another – which would be in the order of .5 seconds.

They could make it a lot faster imo.
I have played several games with collision detection. It’s basically the same mechanic as making sure your character does not run through walls etc, but just functions as a moving wall.
Also, in zergy areas, they could simply instance wvw maps.

Draygo.9473:

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible. That game died for many other reasons, but collision detection did work.

At this point it would be too big of a change for them to add to GW2, but newer games should consider it.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer

LOL.

No it didn’t. It caused unbelievable lagstorms as 100+ players tried to cram up a ramp with a bunch of tanks blocking backed up with mages. Not to mention sync and interpolation issues or block-banding.

Sure when pvp was reduced to 20 man groups because the game became unpopular it worked, kinda.

Yes it did work and it was a nice idea, the lag has little to do with collision detection, it isn’t that hard of a thing for a CPU to calculate really.

It worked in UO and added a level of difficulty to pvp that has been rarely seen since. You’d think that over 15 years later they’d stop going the lazy route of people being able to run through each other and figure out collision detection for games like this.

Oh and friendly fire would be flat out awesome

I get why people think they want this feature but cheating, bugs and griefing will be considerably worse with this system. The programmers will be chasing their tales trying to fix it all. This is a game “feature” most smart devs avoid for good reason.

Maladon.5760:

It worked in UO and added a level of difficulty to pvp that has been rarely seen since. You’d think that over 15 years later they’d stop going the lazy route of people being able to run through each other and figure out collision detection for games like this.

Oh and friendly fire would be flat out awesome

UO had horrible collision detection. The first problem appeared when players simply walked through everything. Then when they finally put in server side checks players constantly rubber banded. Even when things worked players griefed other players by not letting them into cities, access the bank, blocked dungeons, etc. The first few months of UO were a lesson in what not to do in an MMO.

Well I’m assuming there would be a few obvious improvement in the 15+ years since the UO days. All things being equal, collision detection makes for better, more strategic gameplay. You can already see people complaining about griefers which generally means they’re worried about the training wheels coming off. Adding another level of difficulty to pvp/wvw really bothers some people, I say we ignore those people.

Maladon.5760:

You can already see people complaining about griefers which generally means they’re worried about the training wheels coming off.

No, it generally means those people have experienced a multiplayer game with body blocking before.

kelman.9451:

Draygo.9473:

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible. That game died for many other reasons, but collision detection did work.

At this point it would be too big of a change for them to add to GW2, but newer games should consider it.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer, so it is possible.

Ommu.1649:

It worked well in Warhammer

LOL.

No it didn’t. It caused unbelievable lagstorms as 100+ players tried to cram up a ramp with a bunch of tanks blocking backed up with mages. Not to mention sync and interpolation issues or block-banding.

Sure when pvp was reduced to 20 man groups because the game became unpopular it worked, kinda.

Yes it did work and it was a nice idea, the lag has little to do with collision detection, it isn’t that hard of a thing for a CPU to calculate really.

Um you have no idea what you are talking about. I was on the testing team, it lagged pretty badly. There were many instances where my character would warp backwards. Or I would just be taking damage from who knows what till the server went ‘oops’ your actually standing in this AOE next to this banner, olololol.

Yes, banners had collision boxes and you couldn’t walk through them, which lead to plenty of hilarious defenses where you just line the top of the stairs with banners and lolol at people trying to get through them.

It was broken. It lagged.

I much prefer GW2’s system where players themselves cannot bodyblock but you can put down static, temporary walls to prevent players without stability from passing. Its a nice compromise.

Sirendor.1394:

frans.8092:

snacktime.1082:

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

No, you can’t. It’s not about server side performance but about the time it takes for a change of movement (direction or speed) by one client to be communicated to another – which would be in the order of .5 seconds.

They could make it a lot faster imo.
I have played several games with collision detection. It’s basically the same mechanic as making sure your character does not run through walls etc, but just functions as a moving wall.
Also, in zergy areas, they could simply instance wvw maps.

There’s .5 seconds between the wall changing direction and the player seeing it on screen, there is no way you are going to make this work. It was horrible in Need For Speed, where everyone was basically moving more or less in the same direction, it would be worse in Guildwars.

No joke here, I would totally go around body slamming random people if this happened lol.

Friendly fire would never work since it invalidates one of the games most touted features: combo fields. Good luck with that.

Body blocking on the otherhand would be pretty epic!

MarzAttakz.9608:

Body blocking on the otherhand would be pretty epic!

Could be fun indeed, roll forward from the right distance and knock someone down …